Bridge - The Scotsman 10/07/2012

Tuesday’s puzzle...

It was hard to find the best contract on this deal from the European Championships. Most Wests opened some sort of diamond pre-empt, and North overcalled in spades. One or two pairs became overexcited, and stretched to the hopeless spade slam. Even 5S is in jeopardy on a diamond lead. Declarer can safely assume that East has the ace of spades after West’s pre-empt. He wins the ace of diamonds and leads a spade to the queen, but must then take the club finesse to discard the losing diamond from dummy. After ruffing North’s second diamond he crosses to the jack of hearts to ruff his last club. Only then can he afford to concede two trump tricks to East.

Heart contracts are slightly less fraught, since you can afford to draw trump before worrying about discards.

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In the Open Teams Germany’s Jorg Fritsche reached a sporting 6H, and played it like Deep Finesse. He won the diamond lead and ran four rounds of hearts to reach this position:

The fifth heart put East under pressure. If he throws a club declarer has four club tricks and can establish a spade for the twelfth trick; if he throws a spade declarer has just one spade loser; so he must throw his last diamond. But that simply postpones the black suit squeeze: the sixth trump finishes him off.

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